SOPHIA: WHAT ALLOWED NAZISM TO BLOSSOM; PONDERING THE EXTENT OF THE CRISIS.

Date: 7/4/2003

SOPHIA: WHAT ALLOWED NAZISM TO BLOSSOM; PONDERING THE EXTENT OF THE CRISIS.
BEYOND THE BOUNDS OF REASON, DECENCY, CIVILIZATION, AND STILL ONGOING.

(Fourth of July Birthday Gift to America the Beautiful).

Abstract: If Nazism showed one thing, it is that one should not underestimate the viciousness of the minds some humans are capable of. Worse: there is no reason to believe than in Hitler and his helpers one has reached some sort of ceiling, bottom, or limit. Speaking of bottom, it's not even clear we got to the bottom of Nazism. What about those who profited from Nazism, and kept on cruising to even bigger and better things, and now they make noise? As we will show, they exist. Indeed, who and what caused Nazism? How does one take a republic with elected officials and they turn into a gang of lying murderers?
We give therein a sketch of the causes of Nazism. Whatever Hitler (and his Anglo-Saxons followers) said, the Versailles Treaty was not a cause of Nazism, quite the opposite. Certainly a sort of evil and dumb Germanoid culture was the primary criminal cause of Nazism. Certainly the individuals and organizations condemned during de-Nazification were guilty, and should have been punished more. But there were other causal entities behind the explosion of Nazism. Some of those have not been exposed. This is worrisome, because those other entities have escaped the judgment of history and mankind. They have stayed hidden, but recently they became more sure of themselves. Fasten the seat belts, but let the caution of the discourse not dissimulate the gravity of the assertions therein. Whatever happens next, reckoning will occur someday.

IN THE VERY REALM OF DISSIMULATION, A CRISIS THE EXTENT OF WHICH COULD NOT BE GRASPED:

After World War One, the poet Valery observed: " Nous autres civilisations savons que nous sommes mortelles" (We, civilizations now know we are mortal). He also observed in 1919: "The military and economic crises may be over. But the intellectual crisis, being more subtle and, by its nature, assuming the most deceptive appearances (since it takes place in the very realm of dissimulation)... This crisis will hardly allow us to grasp its true extent, its phase."
How true. But is the crisis over, or is it just starting?

French soldiers and politicians had no illusions when World War One ended. Georges Clemenceau, Prime Minister and war leader was crystal clear: "Mark well what I'm telling you. In six months, in a year, five years, ten years, when they like, as they like, the Boches will again invade us."

Marshall Foch, the Supreme Allied Commander correctly prophesized in 1919: "This is not a peace: it is an armistice for twenty years." 20 years later, France was again at war with Germany. The crux of the problem was that the Germanoid subculture of the Prussianized types had neither been destroyed nor admitted guilt after World War One (encouraged as it was by errant minds such as Bertrand Russel's). Worse: those militaristic, imperialist types immediately prepared the next round, by going around the Versailles Treaty (that Clemenceau had devised to prevent just another war).
It was obvious to the French, and it was obvious to the German imperialio-militarists that the next conflict between France and the Nazis was ineluctable. "France is the mortal inexorable enemy... Germany regards the destruction of France as only a means..." (Adolf Hitler, 1924). Ah, yes, although it's rarely pointed out, most of actor of Nazism were already in place, and playing major roles, as soon as 1919. Luddendorf, the operational German army commander was soon to be Hitler's buddy and fellow putschist (1923). Hiddenburg, the supreme German commander, would name Hitler Chancellor. Roehm, future chief of the Nazi SA, crushed demonstrators in Munich, killing many. And so on.

France, wearily, made herself ready, but Hitler and his class became as big as they did because they found help from unexpected quarters. Some of the most crucial helpers were located overseas.

The French, and the Nazis had a clear vision of each other: it was going to be a fight to death. How come the rest of the West acted and spoke as if no crisis was either ongoing, or coming, and as if Hitler was their friend? Even as Nazis had been torturing and killing their own people, and even people from other nations for the whole planet to see, Great Britain and the USA acted as practical protectors of Hitler's criminal organization of the German State. How come? Why did Great Britain and the USA found Nazism so alluring, for so many long crucial years, and gave it nurture and support and protection against the outraged French democracy, just there, in the front line? What was so wrong about the French republic that the Anglo-Saxons would support the Nazi dictatorship instead? Or is it the converse? Is there a flaw in the Anglo-Saxons'culture which makes them partial to Nazi like tendencies?

This question is at the center of why Nazism occurred. Millions of pages on how Nazism came about have been written, and still there is something drastically new to say, and it answers questions we have today for what tomorrow will be made of.

But first let's give a synopsis of how Nazism came about. This is a drastic abstraction. But abstraction is central to thinking, because abstraction condenses thinking, by building mental structures were the bricks themselves are made of the grand efforts of the past. We will develop, in future essays, the parts which are the furthest from conventional wisdom.

THE CAUSES OF NAZISM ARE MORE SUBTLE THAN SIMPLE ANTHROPOPHAGY, AND PHILOSOPHICALLY JUICY:

The cause of the industrial scale anthropophagy of the Mexicas (= Aztecs) was their protein deficiency, up there in the highlands, were they were reduced to eat salamanders. So the Mexicas ate lower elevation people who ate fish and game. That may have been an excuse which was hard to swallow, but it made some sense. In the case of Nazism, though, no such common sense excuse is to be found for having destroyed in killing centers and war about 60 million Europeans, of which six millions were Germans. Which means the uncommon senses therein hidden should be rich in philosophical implications.

A FASCIST COMPATIBLE SUBSET OF GERMAN CULTURE WAS WHAT NAZISM USED AS A MIND:

A certain sort of GERMAN SUBCULTURE is exhibit number one in the procession of causes of Nazism. Everybody needs the Dark Side, but that Germanoid subculture used way too much of it, like a dish with way too much salt. Many German thinkers, as soon as the 19 Century, saw the catastrophe coming, and condemned not just a certain German culture, but the Germans themselves as worthless individuals. Goethe and Nietzsche, both German, were as clear as can be on their contempt for the common German, and the later thinker was apocalyptically prophetic about where Germany was going. A certain devious Germanoid culture privileged lemming behavior, and following orders, which the German learned to respect from birth, especially in the Prussianized part of Germany (which came to be the whole thing after the Versailles Diktat of Bismarck ... in 1871).
In full truth, German anti-Semitism got ennobled with Luther, a clever racist brute (circa 1500). That made racist brutality into religion. Great.

Germanoid anti-Frenchism started with Herder, another brute, that one hyper nationalistic, a hater of the Enlightenment and reason, and arch enemy of Goethe (circa 1780).
Prussianization was intense with Kant; Wagner synthesized the whole thing in a pre Nazi hyper nationalistic, anti-Semitic paroxysm that estranged his (ex) closest friend, musical colleague and (ex) admirer Nietzsche, and so on...

Most of all, as the (German) philosopher Karl Jaspers pointed out, fascism had been the preferred method of unification in Germany, for centuries. Fascism consists into enforcing in all minds the same task oriented mentality, all bundles (fasces) together, around the ax of violence.

After centuries of this sort of enforced communal thinking, a lot of German culture came to consider the bundling as primordial: "E pluribus unum", as the Americans motto. It made Germany strong, it made Germany weak. By comparison, many provinces of France joined in a consensual sort of way, some after plebiscites or democratic process (examples: Dauphine', Savoie, Navarre, etc...). The Franks were very successful; in no small part because they were seen as cosmopolitan laid back lesser-of-all-devils (except when they got on a mission of righteousness, a crusade for civilization, for example in Germany, Italy or all over the Mediterranean).

Prussian politico-military fascism propped as much as it could in the educational system all the nasty hyper nationalistic, racist, or mysticalo-heroic (Hegel) figures it could find, and fed them to students as a monolithic diet. When Germany got all the way down to the (Nazi) philosopher Heidegger, it was concluded "thinking" was "possible only in German" (in particular the French could not think).

LUTHER AS MASTER "THINKER" FOR NAZIS AND ANGLO-SAXONS:

Notice that Luther, this racist, might-is-right brute, is not only at the base of a lot of the Germanoid ethical system Hitler used (the rest came from Darwin, an ill interpreted Englishman). Luther is also at the base of the Protestant ethics which did so much to help create the USA. If one wants, and orders, to torture Jews, a la Luther, why not torturing and oppressing Slavs, Gypsies, blacks, browns, natives, whoever is different? Luther was also partial to political bosses. This explains why so many Anglo-Saxons were so happy first with slavery, then all-too-big capitalists and then with Hitler for so long: the same moral system has been festering, deep down inside, as a gift from Luther the racist lover of dictators. Luther, the grand master of a lot of Anglo-Saxon protestant ethics. Just as the Ku Klux Clan, of course, Luther recommended to 'burn their houses' (of the Jews, as found in Germany, but the Blacks or Indians, as found in America, should be just fine, them being intolerable too).

LATEST TECHNOLOGY WAS THE NEW TOOL NAZISM NEEDED TO CONQUER AND DESTROY:

This does not require much explanation. Dive bombers, fire bombings, Blitzkrieg, Zyklon gas (to kill 2,000 at a time in one room), exquisite train schedules to carry armies, goods, and humans to the slaughterhouses, IBM electromechanical computers to manage the whole intricate administration of occupied territories, deportation and extermination, the modern technology of secrecy: without any of these, Nazism could not have blossomed under the efficient form we have come to know and appreciate, which is to put the latest technology in the service of an immense conspiracy of massively murderous thugs. It simply had never been possible before to kill so many people so easily, and persuade the rest of them sheep it was all right. The new technology also made possible turning around the obsolete moralities of the gullible masses, and crush individual mental resistance of the few who figured it out.

The first time a resistance fighter killed a German officer in Paris, the German High Command asked French judges to pick up ten French citizens who happened to be sitting in prison, and have them condemned and executed. Later on, the Germans even dispensed with the hypocrisy, just grabbing people haphazardly in the streets, or burning entire villages. All of this was easy with technology, be it the technology of "justice", or the mechanized technology of rounding people up as if they were cattle.

GENIAL NEW TECHNOLOGY OF THE 'BIG LIE' AS NAZISM BOLD INTERFACE:

Technology applied to machines gave Nazis the means with which to enslave and extinguish people. Technology also allowed Nazis to give people the minds Nazis viewed as appropriate. Hitler was an unexceptional condensate of a certain (vicious) German subculture, as said above, but in one respect he was exceptional. Hitler was a MASTER LIAR and THEORETICIAN OF LYING. Hitler would have no doubt got the Nobel Prize for Lying, if there were such a thing. Hitler is actually to the modern art of lying what Einstein was to physics. Hitler invented the "Big Lie" theory of lying, and was very explicit about it ("If you lie, tell big lies, etc."...). Now, of course, Hitler was standing on the shoulders of giant liars (like Bismarck). Fascism, when culturally ingrained, tends to grow populations that are very self delusional, and also prone to mislead others. This comes from the fact that correct thinking is restricted to a restricted cognitive bundle (fasces), so everything else, being by (fascist) definition incorrect, one way or another, is supposed to not really matter, and people learn to live in denial of reason itself. Also the intrinsic violence of the fascist state makes sincerity risky.

In any case, Hitler, or more exactly his handlers, jumped on all the possibilities the new technologies offered a politician. Hitler was the first politician to use the radio and the airplane. And he used them massively, even playing hero by flying into storms which had shut down all flying over Germany. Using the media was child's play, and Hitler was frantically supported by the German media tycoons.

GERMAN IMPERIALISTS AND CAPITALISTS AS THE PAYMASTERS OF HITLER:

The de-Nazification trials in Nuremberg exposed the viciousness and duplicity of most financial and industrial capitalists in Germany. They financed the Nazi party massively in full knowledge of what Hitler was up to. Some pushed the duplicity as far as betting big on both the success and the demise of Nazism (which was doable by leveraging heavily both possibilities, as option traders do). No decency would stop them. They would even kill people, melt their gold fillings, and send the gold to Switzerland. This is well known: those big time industrialists and their little helpers were exposed and condemned (not to much, though, for reasons which should be obvious from the next few sentences).

ANGLO SAXON IMPERIALISTS AND CAPITALISTS AS HITLER'S LIFELINE TO BIGGER AND BETTER THINGS:

What is less well known is that this moral corruption of the capitalist and governing circles extended all the way into Great Britain and America. Actually without the contribution of many Anglo-Saxon elements, it is very unlikely that Nazism, initially just a plot against France, would have succeeded to become as big as it did. A combination of anti-French sentiment and greed without any humanistic consideration whatsoever, in the ANGLO-SAXON countries, was perhaps Nazism's greatest help. With so much international Anglo-Saxon applause and help, the German generals, and even the German population, who increasingly felt that Hitler was driving Germany towards a cataclysm, could not quite bring themselves to stopping their Guide. Nor could the French release their 110 divisions into Germany to squash the infamy in a timely manner when Great Britain encouraged Hitler to rearm massively, and even financed him to do so. The crimes of some of the American capitalists and politicians were even much greater, and went all the way, but were never prosecuted, or even talked about. After the war, the Americans had the power, and they bribed their way into teaching the monkeys to applaud the right way, and never see and meditate the wrong things one should never talk about. One day it will be known, though, that the road to Auschwitz went through London and Washington. No unprofitable decency would stop the latter. IBM extermination machines operated in the extermination centers, and the profits were collected after the war. The business of America is business. Worse: the mentality that led to these crimes is still in command and control, as it always happens when criminal organizations are left undisturbed doing what they do best.

CULTURAL DIVIDES: EAST-WEST, BETWEEN SOPHISTICATED AND PRIMITIVES, BUT ALSO NORTH-SOUTH, BETWEEN BRUTES AND FUN LOVING:

It is well known that there was a West-East cultural divide with most of Germany on the wrong side. It came all the way back from Rome, who was unable to establish a short frontier in Poland, as was the initial plan, and, instead went just half way, because of the older Augustus' sudden lack of nerves. The Gallic Franks succeeded to complete the task, eight centuries after Augustus, but in their usual dilettante ways, soon got more interested by Ireland and wherever higher culture they could find. The western Franks left the job of teaching the right values not fully finished in a neglected Germany. It remained to a succession of horrible wars (starting with the horrendous "30 years war" in 17C) to finalize the Greco-Romanization of the Germanic Valhalla (with the ashes of the demoniac Hitler disaster blossoming into the European Union).
It is less often understood that the North-South divide, which is first linguistic, between the "Germanic" languages in the north and the Latin ones in the south, is also endowed with a more subtle, more recent, and more powerful difference which has to do with a potent mix of Puritanism/Lutheranism with less bridled capitalism in the north, versus the more controlled capitalism and more hedonistic personalities of the south (Hedonism wants freedom from power, and Puritanism wants suffering from power). There again the primitivism of Luther siding with the rich and powerful against the poor and destitute, prepared the central emotional core of what became Germanic and Anglo-Saxon capitalism and social organization. That core proved highly successful in wars and empire building, bringing great riches. Precisely because it made people more war like and robot like relative to authority. These are not unsupported opinions without moral consequences, far from it. Just an example: the Nazis exterminated 75% of the Dutch Jews, but the Nazis could exterminate only 25% of the French Jews (because the lack of cooperativeness in France was extreme, and foiled the IBM-Nazi Jewish detection system; France considers it a basic moral requirement to doubt the morality of authority).

In other words, the affirmative action of the USA and the UK in favor of Hitler's Nazism was no accident, but the culmination of a long drawn historical process. Of course this bottomless horror was buried by the Anglo-Saxon powers with the alacrity lions put into burying their waste, lest they be seen for what they are. That would have been bad for business, let alone empire, that everybody worldwide came to realize that, without active Anglo-Saxon support, French and German generals would have put an early end to the Nazi madness. Sorry we are starting to dig, but we want to understand current events better in their full historical splendor. That the French and the Germans have a deep down reason to be angry against pre WW2 pro Nazi Anglo-Saxon machinations may come as a surprise to most concerned. But they may have felt it all along, and reckoning is on its way.

CONCLUSION: THE FULL EXTENT OF THE CRISIS.

Notice that, in this sketch of the causes of the Nazi monstrosity, the Versailles Treaty was not brandished, although Adolf Hitler loved to do so. We appreciate Hitler's genius in the art of lying, but we do not have to follow him everywhere he wanted us to go, actually quite the opposite. We like neither his ovens, nor his ugly mind. The idea that the Versailles Treaty caused a problem originated with the very mental neighborhood Hitler came from. It was both true and false. It is true that if one wanted to make Germany "Lord of the Earth", as Mr. Hitler proposed, Versailles was a problem. Versailles was used by the Nazis to whip Germany into a war frenzy against Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the world in general. But if one wanted peace, the Versailles Treaty was perfect. Fortunately for Hitler, the British and the Americans wanted profits and trade from the Nazis, and perhaps even more. So they told Hitler to go ahead, ignore the French and arm as much as he could (1935). The Nazis wanted world war in 1943-45, after ten years of frantic rearmament (in 1914, "defense" was 3% of Germany GDP, in 1939, 23%).

France succeeded to short circuit the grand alliance symbiosis of various Anglo-Saxon and Germanoid capitalist types by attacking the Nazis five years before they had planned to be ready. France paid a very heavy price. Some paid an even heavier price. But the remaining question is this: is the job really finished, or has too much history been left unsaid? Have we been subtle enough? Have we dispelled enough the deceptive appearances? Have we grasped the true extent of the crisis?

As brutal, hateful, ignorant, arrogant, smug and contemptible superpowerful officials go around the world to bomb and lie, the answer is clearly no.